Usain Bolt Shades Yohan Blake’s Overshadow Comments
Jamaican sprint star turned dancehall producer, Usain Bolt has responded to statements by fellow Jamaican sprinter and former track mate, Yohan Blake, who claimed that his career was “overshadowed” and stunted from the possibility of replacing Bolt as the fastest man alive.
Twenty-nine year old Yohan Blake, in an interview with the Times of India newspaper last week, explained that had there been no Usain Bolt, he would have become “the fastest man in the world”. There were many conversations online agreeing with, criticizing and simply addressing Blake’s comments – including a few from Usain Bolt.
During the upheaval on social media over Blake’s interview, Usain Bolt uploaded three consecutive posts to his Instagram account that seemingly addressed and questioned Blake’s accusation of him overshadowing his career.
Bolt first posted a portrait photo of himself captioned “Overshadow” along with two shoulder shrug emojis.
The retired 33-year old sprinter then posted a video of the men’s 100-meter finals at the 2011 World Athletics Championship in Deagu, South Korea with the caption “Right Time!”. In this Championship, Bolt was eliminated due to a false start and Blake went on to win the gold medal, hinting to disproving Blake’s accusation of him hindering his success.
Bolt’s last post threw more shade on his former track mate’s comments by comically alluding to his production of a dancehall riddim named, Overshadow Riddim.
While some fans found humor in Bolt’s responses, many believed that Yohan Blake had misplaced blame on his team member given his own exceptional track and field achievements including being the youngest world champion in the World Athletics Championship and defeating Bolt twice at the peak of his career during the 2012 pre-Olympic Jamaica National Championship.
Blake went on to become one of two Jamaican sprinters to sweep the top three medals with Bolt in the men’s 200-meter finals at the Olympic Games in London later that year.
This isn’t the first public disparity between top Jamaican male altheltes this year. In an interview with TVJ News in July, Usain Bolt scolded younger athletes Kemar Bailey Cole, Warren Weir and Peter Matthews for not investing enough time and effort into their careers, especially regarding their negative comments about and relationship with renowned track and field coach, Glen Mills.
“These athletes should know themselves and respect that…if you don’t work hard and you don’t train hard, how can you be great? That’s why they’ll never get to a certain level right now”, he explained.
Yohan Blake, who was formerly coached by Glen Mills but is now being coached by Gregory Little, has not offered any further comments. He is currently training for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokoyo, Japan, which he says will be his last Olympics.